In August 2017, Baroo Pet Care founder and CEO Lindsay Hyde wanted to continue expanding her pet services startup to new cities. In addition to raising venture capital, she needed to consider her growth strategy. Should she continue focusing on the needs of her early adopters or start tailoring Baroo’s services to more mainstream customers? And how fast is too fast to grow?

Hyde (MBA 2014) joins Harvard Business School entrepreneurship Professor Tom Eisenmann to discuss how an early false positive signal from investors set an unsustainable course for her startup in the case, Baroo: Pet Concierge, with additional lessons from Eisenmann’s 2021 book, Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success.